Loren D. Estleman is generally considered the best Western writer of his generation. Such novels as Aces & Eights, The Stranglers, and Bloody Season rank with the very best Western novels ever written. As will be seen here, Estleman brings high style to his writing, the sentences things of beauty in and of themselves. Few writers of prose can claim that. He has brought poetry, historical truth, and great wisdom to the genre. His finest short western fiction was collected in The Best Western Stories of Loren D. Estleman.
In the weeks to come there would be considerable debate and some brandishing of weapons over who had been the first to lay eyes on Mr. Nicholas Pitt of Providence; but the fact of the matter is the honor belonged to Ekron Fast, Persephone’s only blacksmith. It was he, after all, who replaced the shoe the stranger’s great black hammerhead had thrown just outside town, and as everyone who lived there knew, a traveler’s first thought upon reaching water or civilization in that dry Huachuca country was his horse. Nor was Pitt’s a horse for a former cow man like Ekron to forget.
“Red eyes,” he declared to the gang at the Fallen Shaft that Wednesday night in July. “Eighteen—hell, twenty hands if he was one, that stud, with nary a speck of any color but black on him except for them eyes. Like burning pipeplugs they was. Feature that.”
“Oklahoma Blood Eye.” Gordy Wolf, bartender at the Shaft, refilled Ekron’s glass from a measured bottle, collected his coin, and made a note of the transaction in the ledger with a gnawed stub of pencil. As a half-breed Crow he couldn’t drink, and so the owner required him to keep track of what came out of stock. “I seen it in McAlester. Thisyer dun mare just up and rolled over on the cavalry sergeant that was riding her, snapped his neck like dry rot. Your Mr. Pip better watch that don’t happen to him.”
“Fermented mash, more ’n likely, both cases.” This last came courtesy of Dick Wagner, who for the past eleven years had stopped off at the Shaft precisely at six forty-five for one beer on his way home from the emporium. He chewed sen-sen in prodigious amounts to keep his wife Lucy from detecting it on his breath.
“Pitt, not Pip,” said Ekron. “Mr. Nicholas Pitt of Providence. Where’s that?”
“East a ways,” Wagner said. “Kansas I think.”
“He didn’t talk like no Jayhawker I ever heard. ‘There’s a good fellow,’ says he, and gives me that there ten-cent piece.”
“This ain’t no ten-cent piece.” Gordy Wolf was staring at the coin Ekron had given him for the drink. It had a wavy edge and had been stamped crooked with the likeness of nobody he recognized. He bit it.
“Might I see it?”
Gordy Wolf now focused his good eye on Professor the Doctor Webster Bennett, late of the New York University classical studies department, more lately of the Brimstone Saloon across the street. The bartender’s hesitation did not mean he suspected that the coin would not be returned; he was just unaccustomed to having the good educator conscious at that hour. Professor the Doctor Bennett’s white linen and carefully brushed broadcloth had long since failed to conceal from anyone in Persephone that beneath it, at any hour past noon, was a sizeable bag.
Handed the piece, Professor the Doctor Bennett stroked the edge with his thumb, then raised his chin from the bar and studied the coin on both sides, at one point holding it so close to his pinkish right eye he seemed about to screw it in like a monocle. Finally he returned it.
“Roman. Issued, I would say, something after the birth of Christ, and not very long after. The profile belongs to Tiberius.”
“It cover Ekron’s drink?”
“I rather think it will.” He looked at Ekron. “I would hear more of your Mr. Pitt.”
“He ain’t my Mr. Pitt. Anyway I don’t much look at folks, just the animals they ride in on. Seen his clothes; fine city ones they was, and a duster. Hogleg tied down on his hip like you read in the nickel novels. And there’s something else.”
“Gunfighter?” Wagner sat up straight. His greatest regret, aside from having chosen Lucy for his helpmeet, was that he had come West from Louisiana too late to see a real gunfight. The great pistoleers were all dead or gone East to act on the stage. All except one, of course, and he had proved frustrating.
“Or a dude,” said Gordy Wolf. “Tenderfoot comes out here, wants everyone to think he’s Wild Bill.”
Ekron spat, missing the cuspidor by his standard margin. “Forget the damn gun, it don’t count. Leastwise not till it goes off. Gordy, you’re injun. Man comes in off that desert country up North. Babocomari’s dry till September, Tucson’s a week’s ride, gila and roadrunner’s the only game twixt here and Iron Springs. What you figure he’s got to have in provisions and truck?”
“Rifle, box of cartridges. Grain for the horse. Bacon for himself and maybe some tinned goods. Two canteens or a skin. That’s if he’s white. Apache’d do with the rifle and water.”
“Well, Mr. Nicholas Pitt of Providence didn’t have none of that.”
“What you mean, just water?”
“I mean nothing. Not water nor food nor rifle nor even a blanket roll to keep the chill off his cojones in the desert at night. Man rides in with just his hip gun and saddle and nary a bead of sweat on man nor mount, and him with nothing behind him but a hunnert miles of sand and alkali.” He jerked down his whiskey and looked around at his listeners. “Now, what would you call a man like that, if not the Devil his own self?”
Thus, in addition to having been first to spot the stranger who would mean so much to the town’s fortunes, Ekron Fast settled upon him the appelation by which he would be commonly known when not directly addressed. From that time forward, His Own Self, uttered in silent but generally agreed-upon capitals, meant none other and required no illumination.
At the very moment that this unconscious christening was taking place, Guy Dante, manager at the Belial Hotel, was in the throes of a similar demonstration, albeit with somewhat less theater, for his wife. Angel Dante had come in perturbed to have found Dick Wagner gone and the emporium closed and therefore a trip wasted to purchase red ink with which to keep the books. As was his custom, Guy had been bleating on while she unpinned her hat and removed her gloves, and so went unheeded for the crucial first minute of his speech.
“… registered with no mark like I ever say, and him from his clothes and deportment a city gentleman who should certainly have enjoyed a considerable education,” he finished.
“What mark? What gentleman? Oh, Mr. Dante, sometimes I believe you talk sideways just to increase my burden.” She tugged on green velvet penwipers for another go at the books.
“Room six. He registered while you were out. I just sent Milton up with water for his bath. Weren’t you listening?”
She didn’t acknowledge the question. In truth she was slightly hard of hearing and preferred to have people think she was rude rather than advertise the fact that she was seven years older than her husband; a piece of enlightenment that would have surprised many of the town’s citizens, who assumed that the difference was much greater. “I don’t smell the stove,” she said.
“He said cold water would be more than satisfactory. Here’s his mark I was telling you about.” He shoved the registration book at her.
She seated her spectacles in the dents alongside her nose and examined the two-pronged device scratched deeply into the creamy paper. She ran a finger over it. “It looks like some kind of brand. He must be a cattleman.”
“He didn’t look like one. What would a cattleman be doing in this country?”
“Perhaps he knows something. Perhaps the railroad is coming and he’s here to check out the prospect for shipping beef. Oh, Mr. Dante, why did you give him six? Nine’s the president.”
“He asked for six.”
“Land. I hope you had the presence to have Milton carry up his traps.”
“He didn’t have any. And he didn’t talk like any cattleman either. He asked about the Brimstone. Wanted to know if it’s for sale.”
“An entrepreneur, in Persephone?” She cast a glance up the stairs, removing her spectacles as if the portly, diamond-stickpinned figure she associated with an entrepreneur might appear on the landing and see them. “Land. He must know something.”
“If he does, this town sure isn’t it. Nor Ned Harpy. He’d sell his sister before he’d let that saloon go. And for a smaller price to boot.”
“Nevertheless we must make him comfortable. Prosperity may be involved.”
Dante made that braying noise his wife found distressing. “I hope he tells us when it’s fixed to start. Wait till you see what he gave me for the room.”
Only the manager’s familiar bray rose above the first floor, where Milton heard it on his way to room six. Inside he hung up the fine striped suit he had finished brushing and asked the man splashing behind the screen if he wanted his boots blacked as well. Milton made beds, served meals, and banished dirt and dust from the Belial with an industry that come naturally to the son of a stablehand.
“If you would, lad.” The man’s whispery voice barely rose above the lapping in the tub. It reminded Milton of a big old rattler shucking its skin. “There something on the bureau for you. Much obliged.” Then he laughed, which was worse than when he spoke.
Milton picked up the boots, handsome black ones with butter-soft tops that flopped over and a curious two-pointed design on each one that looked like a cow’s hoofprint. They were made of a wonderful kind of leather he had never seen or felt before, as dark as his father’s skin. His skin was much lighter than his father’s. He knew that some mean folks around town said he wasn’t Virgil’s son at all, sired as like as not by some unparticular plantation owner—disregarding that Milton was only thirteen and born well after Mr. Lincoln did his duty. Such folks could go to hell.
He got a chill then, in that close room in July in Arizona, and took his mind off it by examining the strange coin he had picked up from the dresser. Confederate pewter, most like. No wonder Mr. Pitt had laughed.
Only he didn’t think that was the reason. Damn little about strangers made sense—those few that found their way here after the last of the big silver interests had hauled its wagon east—but this one less than most. Where were his possibles? Why weren’t his clothes caked and stinking of man and horse, instead of just dusty? And how was it, after Milton had filled the bathtub himself with buckets of water ice-cold from the pump, that steam was rolling out under the screen where the stranger was bathing?
JOSH MARLOWE RODE up from Mexico in the middle of a September rainstorm with water funneling off his hatbrim fore and aft and shining on his back oilskin. Charon’s hoofs splashed mud up over his boots and made sucking sounds when they pulled clear. The gray snorted its misery.
Josh concurred. In times past he had preferred entering a town in weather that kept folks indoors. There were some short fuses then who’d throw down on him the second they recognized him but wouldn’t later when they had a chance to think of it, making arrivals the most dangerous time in a gunman’s experience. But that was before he’d given up the road. Persephone was home, and now that there was no danger he discovered he hated riding in the rain.
Peaceable though he was these days, he clung to his old custom of coming in the back way. He dismounted behind the livery, found the back door locked, stepped back, and kicked it until Virgil opened it from inside. He stood there like always with coal-oil light at his back and his old Colt’s Dragoon gleaming in his big black fist.
“Virgil, now many times I tell you to snuff that lantern when a stranger comes?’
The stablehand’s barn-door grin shone in the bad light. He stuck the big pistol under his belt. “Balls, Mr. Josh. You ain’t no stranger.”
Josh left the point short of argument and handed him the reins. “How’s Milton?”
“Gettin’ uppity. Hotel work’s got him thinking he’s town folks.” He led the gray inside.
The barrel stove was glowing. Josh slung his saddle and pouches over an empty stall and warmed his hands. When he turned to put heat on his backside he spotted the black standing in its stall. He whistled. Reflection from the fire made its eyes look red.
“That there’s Mr. Pitt’s horse.” Virgil began rubbing down Charon with burlap. “You stand clear of that animal, Mr. Josh. He’s just plain evil.”
“Who might Mr. Pitt be?”
“That’s right, you been gone.”
“Two months trailing grandee beef to Mexico City. This Pitt with the railroad? Credit won’t acquire a mount like that.”
“If he is, the railroad done bought the Brimstone. Mr. Pitt, he runs the place now.”
“Horseshit. Ned Harpy told me he’d die before he sold out.”
“I reckon he wasn’t pulling your leg.”
Josh saw the stablehand wasn’t smiling. “The hell you say.”
The black horse reared, screamed, plunged, and kicked its stall. The hammering mingled with a long loud peal of thunder. Even Charon shied from it.
“You see what I mean about that animal,” Virgil said, when it had calmed down. “It happened real quick, Mr. Josh. Mr. Ned, he got mad when that Mr. Pitt wouldn’t take no as an answer and pulled on him right there in the gameroom. Only Mr. Pitt filled his hand first and just drilled that man full of holes. He was dead when he hit the floor. Mrs. Harpy, she sold out and went back East.”
“Ned was fast.”
“Near as fast as you.” Virgil was grave. “You stay out of the Brimstone, Mr. Josh.”
He grinned. “Save that talk for your boy. I gave all that up years ago.”
“I hopes so, Mr. Josh. I surely does. You can’t beat that man. Nobody can.”
From there Josh went to the Fallen Shaft, where he closed the door against the wind and rain and piano music clattering out of the Brimstone. Gordy Wolf was alone. He took his elbows off the bar.
“Josh Marlowe. Gouge out my eyes and pour vinegar in the holes if it ain’t. What can I draw you, Josh?”
“Tanglefoot. Where is everybody?” He slapped water off his hat and hooked a heel over the rail.
Gordy Wolf shook his head, poured, and made a mark in the ledger. “You could touch off a Hotchkiss in here since they put the piano in across the street. Nobody’d mind.”
“What about Professor the Doctor Webster Bennett? He’d never desert the Shaft.”
“He’s give up the Creature. Says it don’t fit with teaching school.”
“That’s what the council said when they booted him for falling on his face during sums. Then they closed down the schoolhouse.”
“Mr. Pitt bought it and opened it back up. Professor the Doctor ain’t got but six pupils and one of them’s near as old as him. Way he struts and fluffs his feathers you’d think he’s still learning Eyetalian and Greek to them rich men’s sons back home.”
“This the same Pitt killed Ned Harpy?”
“If there’s two I’d hear about it.”
“From what Virgil said I didn’t take him to be one for the community.”
“Before the school he bought the Belial Hotel from Old Man Merry and deeded it to Guy and Angel Dante and then he bought the emporium from Dick Wagner and made him manager at the Brimstone.”
“I can’t feature Lucy Wagner sitting still for that.”
“Lucy went back to New Orleans. She got on worse with Mr. Pitt than she did with Dick. You wouldn’t know Dick now. He’s got him a red vest and spats.”
“What’s Pitt’s purpose? When the mines played out I gave Persephone five years.”
“He told Ekron Fast there’s future here. Then he bought him a new forge and an autymobile.”
“Ain’t no autymobiles twixt here and Phoenix.”
“There one now. ‘Thisyer’s the future I been telling you about,’ he says to Ekron. ‘Master it.’ Ekron run it straight into an arroyo. But he fixed it with his new forge.”
“I reckon he’s one stranger who’s made himself popular,” Josh said.
“He’s got him an eye for what every man he meets wants more’n anything, plus a pocket deep enough to get it for him.”
“Except Ned Harpy.”
“Nobody much liked Ned anyway. If Mr. Pitt was to run for mayor tomorrow I reckon he’d get everybody’s vote but two.”
“How is it he ain’t throwed his loop over you and Virgil?”
The half-breed put an elbow on the bar and leaned in close enough for Josh to discover that his ledger-keeping had not prevented him from sampling the Shaft’s stock. “On account of Virgil’s a Christian man,” he said. “And on account of I ain’t. Mr. Pitt, he gets what falls between.”
“That’s heathen talk.”
“It ain’t neither. Just because they throwed me out of the mission school after a week don’t mean I didn’t hear what they had to teach.”
Josh drank whiskey. “I got to meet this fellow.”
“How long’s it been since you wore a pistol?” Gordy Wolf kept his good eye on him.
“Three years.”
“You’d best not.”
“Talking’s all I’m after.”
“When your kind meet his kind it don’t stop at talking.”
“What kind’s mine, Christian or Ain’t?”
“I seen you struggling with both.”
He stopped grinning and drained his glass. “It’s a damn shame the mission school didn’t keep you, Gordy. You’d of made a right smart preacher.”
“Call me what you like. I’m just saying you’d best climb on that gray horse and ride out and forget all about Persephone. That Mr. Pitt is hell on the draw.”
Thunder cracked.
TWO MONTHS WAS hardly long enough for the Brimstone to change as much as it had since Josh’s last visit. It was one thing to cover the knotty walls with scarlet cloth and take down the prizefighter prints behind the bar to make room for a gilt-framed painting of a reclining naked fat lady holding an apple and laughing; quite another to rip out the old pine bar and replace it with one made from gnarled black oak with what looked like horned evil children carved into the corners. Such items, like the enormous chandelier that now swung from the center rafter, its thousand candles filling the room with oppressive heat, required more time than that to order and deliver. Let alone make, for what catalogue house stocked statuary representing serpents amorously entwined with more naked femininity like the two Amazons thus engaged on either side of the batwing doors?
Mr. Pitt’s tastes were apparently not excessive for Persephone’s nightlife, however. The main room was packed. Under an awning of lazily turning smoke the drinkers’ voices rose above the noise from the piano, where a thickish man in a striped suit and derby was playing something fit to raise blisters on a stump. The strange, fast melody was unknown to Josh, who decided he had been below the border a mite too long.
“Look what the wind blew up from Mexico!”
Gordy Wolf hadn’t lied about the spats and red vest. They were accompanied by green silk sleeve garters, a platinum watch chain with a dyed rabbit’s-foot fob, and an eastern straw hat tipped forward at such a steep angle the former merchant had to slant his head back to see in front of him.
“Howdy, Dick.” Josh sentenced his hand to serious pumping by one heavy with rings.
“What you think of the old place?” Dick Wagner asked. His eyes looked wild and he was grinning to his molars.
“Talks up for itself, don’t it?”
“Loud and proud. Lucy’d hate it to death.” He roared and clapped a hand on Josh’s shoulder. “Keep! Draw one on the house for my gunslinging friend here.”
“After I talk to the owner. He around?”
“That’s him banging the pianny.”
Josh stared at the derbied piano player. He was built like a nailkeg and very fair—a fact that surprised Josh, though he could not own why—and wore jaunty reddish chin-whiskers that put the former gunman in mind of an elf he had seen carved on the door of Irish Mike’s hospitable house in St. Louis. As Josh approached him he turned glass-blue eyes on the newcomer. “I’ll warrant you’re Marlowe.” He went on playing the bizarre tune.
“I reckon news don’t grow much grass in a town this size.”
“Nor does your reputation. I am Nicholas Pitt, originally of Providence. You’ll excuse me for not clasping hands.”
“It sounds a difficult piece.”
“A little composition of my own. But it’s not the reason. I only touch flesh with someone when we’ve reached accord.”
Something in Pitt’s harsh whisper made Josh grateful for this eccentricity. “I admired your horse earlier this evening.”
“Beelzebub? I’ve had him forever. Ah, thank you, Margaret. Can I interest you in a libation, Marlowe?” He quit playing and accepted a tall glass from a plump girl in a spangled corset. She looked to Josh like one of old Harry Bosch’s daughters. He shook his head. Pitt shrugged and drank. A thread of steam rose from the liquid when he lowered it. “I watched you as you came in. You don’t approve of the renovations.” It was a statement.
“I ain’t used to seeing the place so gussy.”
“The gameroom is unoccupied. I’ll show it to you if you’ll mosey in there with me.” Laughing oddly, he rose. His coat-frock swayed, exposing briefly the shiny black handle of a Colt’s Peacemaker strapped to his hip.
The side room was similarly appointed, with the addition of faro and billiard tables covered in red felt. Milton, the black stablehand’s son, sat in the dealer’s chair polishing a cuspidor.
“That will be all, lad.” Pit tossed him a silver dollar.
Josh laid a hand on Milton’s shoulder as he was headed for the door. “Your pa know you’re here?”
“No sir. I get a whuppin’. But Mr. Pitt he pays better than the hotel.” He lowered his voice. “’Specially since he started paying real money.” He left.
“Good lad. But I have hopes for him.” Pitt took another sip and set his glass on the billiard table, where it boiled over.
“Who are you?” Josh asked.
“I am a speculator.”
“Persephone’s past speculating.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Marlow. My commodity is most plentiful here.”
“What’s your commodity?”
“Something that is valued by only three in town at present. Milton’s father Virgil, because he understands it. The half-breed Gordy Wolf, because he does not possess it. And I.”
“What about me?”
“You have been a signal disappointment. When you came to this territory, that item which you are pleased to call yours was more than half mine. Since then you have begun to reclaim it.”
“You came to take it back?”
Pitt laughed. It sounded like scales dragging over stone. “You exalt yourself. What is your soul against the soul of an entire town?”
“Then Virge and Gordy was right. You’re him.”
“Succinctly put. Gary Cooper would be proud.”
“Who?”
“Perhaps I should explain myself. But where to start? Aha. Has it ever occurred to you in your wanderings that the people you meet are a tad too colorful, their behavior insufferably eccentric, their language over-folksy? That they themselves are rather—well, broad? Half-breed Crows tending bar, drunken college professors, henpecked merchants, gossipy blacksmiths, Negro liverymen who talk as if they just stepped off the plantation—really, where does one encounter these types outside of entertainment?”
“Keep cranking, Mr. Pitt. You ain’t drawed a drop yet.”
“There. That’s just what I mean. Why can’t you say simply that you don’t follow? I don’t suppose you’d understand the concept of alternate earths.”
Josh said nothing.
“There is, if you will, a Master Earth, against which all the lesser alternate earths must be measured. Each earth has an equal number of time frames, and it’s my privilege to move in and out of these frames among the Master and alternate earths. Now, on Master Earth, the American West within this frame is quite different from the one in which you and I find ourselves. This West, with its larger-than-life characters and chivalric codes of conduct, is but a mythology designed for escapist entertainment on Master Earth. That earth’s West is a much drearier place. Are you still with me?”
“Sounds like clabber.”
“How to put it.” Pitt worried a whiskered lip between small ivory teeth. “You were a gunfighter. Were you ever struck by the absurdity of this notion that the faster man in a duel is the moral victor, when the smart way to settle a fatal difference would be to ambush your opponent or shoot him before he’s ready?”
“We don’t do things that way here.”
“Of course not. But on Master Earth they do. Or did. I get my tenses tangled jumping between time frames. In any case being who and what I am, I thought it would be fine sport to do my speculating in this alternate West. The fact that I am mortal here lends a nice edge to those splendid fast-draw contests like the one I enjoyed with Ned Harpy. His soul was already mine when I came here, but I couldn’t resist the challenge.” He sighed heavily; Josh felt the heat. “I’m aggrieved to say I’ve found none to compare with it. I’d expected more opposition.”
“You talk like you got the town sewed up.”
“I bagged the entire council this very afternoon when I promised them they’d find oil if they drilled north of Cornelius Street. The rest is sweepings.”
“What do you need with Milton?”
“The souls of children hold no interest for me. But his father’s would be a prize. I’m certain a trade can be arranged. Virgil will make an excellent pair of boots when these wear out.” He held up a glossy black toe and laughed. Wind and rain lashed the windows, howling like demons.
“You trade often?”
Pitt cocked an eyebrow under the derby. “When the bargain is sufficient. What are you proposing?”
“I hear you’re fast against saloonkeepers. How are you with a genuine gunman?”
“Don’t be ludicrous. You haven’t been in a fight in years.”
“You yellowing out?”
Pitt didn’t draw; the Peacemaker was just in his hand. Lightning flashed, thunder roared, a windowpane blew in and rain and wind extinguished the lamps in the room. All at once they re-ignited. The Peacemaker was in its holster. Pitt smiled. “What will you use for a gun?”
“I’ll get one.”
“That won’t be necessary.” He opened a drawer in the faro table and took out a glistening gray leather gun belt with a slate-handled converted Navy Colt in the holster. “I think you’ll find this will fit your hand.”
Josh accepted the rig and drew out the pistol. The cylinder was full. “I sold this set in Tucson. How’d you come by it?”
“I keep track of such things. What are the spoils?”
“Me and the town if you win. If I win you ride out on that red-eyed horse and don’t come back. Leave the town and everybody in it the way you found them.”
“That won’t be necessary. In the latter event I’d be as dead as you in the former. In this world, anyway. What is hell for a gunfighter, Marlowe? Eternity on a dusty street where you take on all challengers, your gun hand growing swollen and bloody, never knowing which man you face is your last? I’ll see you’re kept interested.”
“Stop jawing and go to fighting.”
Smiling, Pitt backed up several paces, spread his feet, and swept his coat-frock behind the black-handled pistol, setting himself. Josh shot him.
The storm wailed. Pitt staggered back against the billiard table and slid to the floor. Black blood stained his striped vest. The glass-blue eyes were wide. “Your gun was already out! You didn’t give me a chance!”
Josh shrugged. “Did you think you were the only one who could travel between worlds?”